Little Dunmow: The Tomb, the Legend and Maid Marian
Could the mysterious tomb at Little Dunmow really belong to the woman who became Robin Hood’s Maid Marian?
Every now and then, a place sends you down a fascinating historical rabbit hole. For me, that place was Little Dunmow, near Colchester in Essex.
I began with a simple question: what connects this quiet Essex village with Maid Marian? The answer turned out to be a fascinating mixture of medieval politics, royal scandal, folklore and centuries of storytelling.
Today, little remains of the Augustinian Priory of St Mary the Virgin, founded in 1106. The surviving church was once its Lady Chapel, and inside is a remarkable alabaster tomb traditionally associated with Matilda Fitzwalter—better known in legend as Maid Marian.
But how much of the story is actually true?
The story of Matilda
The legend centres on Robert Fitzwalter, one of the most powerful barons of King John’s reign and later a leading figure in the events surrounding Magna Carta.
According to a much later tradition, King John became infatuated with Fitzwalter’s daughter, Matilda. When she rejected his advances, John supposedly turned against her family. Eventually, Matilda fled to Dunmow, where the king’s messenger allegedly poisoned her.
It is a compelling story—but there is a problem.
There is very little reliable evidence that Matilda Fitzwalter existed in the form described by the legend, let alone that King John had her poisoned.
The story gradually gathered momentum through medieval chronicles and later writers. In 1597, Michael Drayton turned it into romantic poetry, portraying John pursuing the chaste Matilda.
Then, in 1600, playwright Anthony Munday took the story a step further.
In his Robin Hood plays, Matilda becomes Maid Marian. She follows Robin to Sherwood, adopts the name Marian and eventually dies after being poisoned by King John at Dunmow.
And so two traditions that had previously existed separately became intertwined.
A legend carved in stone
By the seventeenth century, the story had become firmly attached to Little Dunmow.
John Weever, writing in 1631, described Matilda’s supposed tomb and repeated the tale of her poisoning. William Dugdale later included a similar account in Monasticon Anglicanum.
But here the story takes an interesting turn.
Who is actually represented by the famous alabaster tomb?
For many years, the female figure was identified locally with Matilda Fitzwalter. However, the monument itself tells us something very different. The alabaster tomb dates from the fifteenth century, more than two hundred years after the supposed death of Matilda.
Historic England identifies the monument as that of Walter Fitzwalter and his wife, dating from around 1432–1464. The elegant female effigy is therefore not the Matilda of the Robin Hood legend, but the wife of a much later member of the Fitzwalter family.
This is an important distinction.
The Fitzwalters really did have a long association with Little Dunmow, and members of the family were buried there. That genuine connection may well have helped later generations attach the story of Matilda to the church and its tomb.
But the beautiful alabaster lady lying beside her husband was born into a very different generation from the Matilda of legend.
So, was she Maid Marian?
The most fascinating part of the story is perhaps not whether Matilda really was Maid Marian, but how the two became connected.
Over time, a traditional Marian figure appears to have been transformed into Matilda Fitzwalter, the daughter of a powerful baron and the heroine of a romantic tale involving King John and Robin Hood.
The fifteenth-century tomb at Little Dunmow is not Matilda’s. It commemorates a much later Fitzwalter couple. Yet the legend has become inseparable from the church and its beautiful alabaster figure.
History may give us the facts—but sometimes it is the stories that survive.
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